We decided it was best to hit Saint Michel early before the tourist rammed the place and we needed to drop the car in Paris before 17:00 requiring use to leave St Michel before 13:00. Arriving at the ancient monastery site just after 9:00 we parked as designated and realised that the car park is on the tide path. We were sternly warned that we had to move our car before 20:00 as the tide by then would reach it and wash it away. This of course didn't fear us because we were required on the 20:13 train to London otherwise we wouldn't make it home! Still it was pretty quirky and cool to see a car park appear as the morning high tide receded. The Mont resembles something out a fairytale.
Imagine a rocky outcrop in the sea, connected to the main land through a causeway that during high tide disappears, isolating the island. The mount rises out if the north sea to a hight of 681 metres. Pretty low compared with some of the places we had seen but vast when all the landscape around it is flat. Around the base of the mountain there is a village with the buildings dating back to 1400s, protecting the village and the entire mount is a defensive wall and ram parts. This wall directly faces the sea when the high tide is in. Think Helms deep from the Lord of the Rings, spectacular and its easy to see why no attacker has ever managed to breech the walls and take the city. The Mount was an effective stronghold in the 100 years war. Further up the mount sits a monastery that is made up of buildings from various ages, the first dating back to 801 AD! The monastery is vast, and dominated the top of the mount. Like nothing I or John have ever seen. We climbed the wet and rather unforgiving looking stone steps up to the monastery, it felt a little like Switzerland and legs began straining again. We toured through the various rooms of the monastery, the stone work was undeniable impressive. Just the fact that the stone was there at all was staggering when you realise the location and the lack of modern building infrastructure back when the buildings were constructed. Just hiking the stone from the base of the mount to the top looked like a Herculean task.
After seeing the historic buildings we went to have our penultimate European meal. We had a very Normandy themed meal, with John enjoying steamed mussels, although they are of course fiddly. I had to have crepes for dessert, its just rude to be in France so long and not enjoy their famous pancake desserts. John had apple sorbet with Calvados dripped on, all good times. We paid up and headed off to our car, although we had parked as close as possible when we turned up the tide movement meant that our car was now at the furthest part of the car park, more and more of the car park is revealed. We had one final look at Saint Michel and jumped in the car for the final driving leg in Europe.We headed to Paris to drop off the car, we had managed to do over 3 500 miles. :-) yea for getting our monies worth out of our unlimited mileage contract.
During the drive we had the worst weather all holiday. Rain lashing down at times we could hardly see the car in front. This posed us a problem. You see in France they have two speed limits on their motorways, 130 kmh if it's dry 110 kmh in the rain. Our flawless planing had us expecting to be travelling at the maximum speed limit to hit Paris in time to drop off the car. So we decided to play it safe and do 120 kmh in the rain. Also we were confused by the nuances, what exactly was rain, the lashing stopped for a while but the roads wear still soaked, we decided to play it safe and presume that unless it was heavy rain the maximum speed limit stood. We had a long way to drive and not much time to do it in. We arrived in Paris in good time, however the city isn't the easiest to navigate and Parisians drive like absolute death wishers. John found it immensely funny when we discovered that I had to drive the car around the Arc de Triomphe roundabout. This roundabout is lengendary for being mental, no lights, no lanes, no rules, every car for itself. Infact we had heard that many insurnace policies in France would cover cars only they never went around the roundabout. With a battle cry in my lungs and the roof and windows down we fought our way across the roundabout, John captured the event in a number of still shorts from his camera. He said the shots would act like a black box recording if the infamous roundabout got us. We made it! No crash, or bumps or even scrapes. We continued to the Gare du Nord. Finally parking the car in the drop off point I breath a sigh of relief, I had crossed Paris and survived the Parians death drivers!
The hand over of the car keys was surprisingly casual. We expected trouble on a couple of fronts, first the massive chip in the windscreen from the stone in Spain. Two the number of miles we had ( the paper work suggests that the two companies we had dealt with involving the car hire hadn't communicated as best as they could----the hire company expected us drive 999 km in the hire period, we managed 5630 km! Of course our contract with Holiday Autos stated unlimited mileage, so we were covered but we thought there would be a bit of a battle when we dropped the car off. However true to form the Parisian (lazy) worker just took the keys and wished us bon voyage. Glad it went easier than planned, good times. We popped into a little cafe in the station, just 4 minutes from the check in of the Euro Star. Having a very un-French final meal of burger and chips we paid up and filed into the Euro Star loungue, awaiting boarding we sat down and tried to finish this blog.
We arrived back in London and jumped in a Taxi to Waterloo. After paying for the taxi with proper money (i.e. it had the Queen's head on it) we rushed to get a ticket and get on a train to Camberley. We were very kindly picked up by Amber - Thank you! Unfortunately, I didn't get a kiss and hug, only John did. When we got back to John's we partook in a Chai tea as recommended by John - very nice. I headed home and after flagging a bit halfway through a swift redbull allowed me to make it home.
All in all an amazing 10 days!
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